Month: April 2024

The Washington Post took a look at what we know about the state of Trump’s health:

As former president Donald Trump escalated his attacks on President Biden’s health and mental fitness last fall, Trump released the first updated report on his own condition in more than three years.

This assessment, however, stood in stark contrast to the relatively detailed reports released by the White House during his term. Instead of specifics like blood pressure and medications, the letter had just three paragraphswithout specific numbers proclaiming that Trump was in “excellent health” and had “exceptional” cognitive ability. It did not disclose Trump’s weight.

And after relying on a longtime personal doctor and then twoWhite House physicians who had attested to his well-being in office, Trump turned to an unknown on the national stage to providethis report: Bruce A. Aronwald, a 64-year-old osteopathic physician from New Jersey — and a longtime member of Trump’s Bedminster golf club.

The concierge doctor and fixture at Bedminster declined to be interviewed and said there’s no reason to release any more details of the 78 year old candidate’s health because he is strong physically and sharp cognitively. So that’s that apparently, which only leads to more speculation about what’s going on with him (because something is…)

Biden has released a much more comprehensive report on his health with all the details about his medications, physical impairments like sleep apnea and “stiff gait” giving a fuller picture of the 81 year old.

They’re both old and both appear to be physically healthy. Trump, for some reason, is the only one who refuses to have a real physical and release the details. You have to wonder why. But then remember the history:

Trump has long relied on personal physicians and White House doctors to respond to — and sometimes insulate him from — questions about his health.

In 2015, h etweeted that “as a presidential candidate, I have instructed my longtime doctor to issue, within two weeks, a full medical report — it will show perfection.”

A full medical report was not immediately forthcoming. Instead, the following day,Trump’s then-physician, Harold Bornstein, signed a four-paragraph letter that said Trump would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” It provided only a few metrics such as blood pressure and a PSA test for prostate screening.

Bornstein, a gastroenterologist who died in 2021, later told CNN that Trump “dictated that whole letter. I didn’t write that letter. I just made it up as I went along.”

As the 2016 campaign developed, Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, released a detailed medical report and challenged Trump to do the same.

After pressure mounted on Trump to release more information, Bornstein conducted another examination and, in September 2016, Trump went on “The Dr. Oz Show” and, with a dramatic flourish, pulled out a new report for Oz to read. That letter included more information about blood tests and other metrics than the first letter, and said Trump was in “excellent physical health.”

In early 2017, Bornstein told the New York Times that Trump took drugs for hair loss, rosacea and high cholesterol. As a result of that revelation, he said he was told he was no longer under consideration to be White House physician. And two days after that article was published, Bornstein later told NBC News, a White House official and two others conducted a “raid” on his office to obtain the president’s medical records, which he said made him feel “raped, frightened and sad.” The White House responded at the time that it was “standard operating procedure” to obtain the documents and denied that it was a raid.

Then there was Dr Feelgood Jackson, recently revealed to have been dispensing massive amounts of narcotics during the Trump administration:

During his presidency, Trump’s first White House physician, Ronny Jackson, appeared in the White House briefing room in 2018 to announce that tests performed at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center found Trump to be in excellent health.

The results were detailed, showing that Trump’s weight had increased from 236 to 239 pounds, which qualified him as borderline obese for a man of 6-3. Jackson also said that Trump had scored a 30 out of 30 on a basic cognitive test designed to detect early signs of cognitive impairment.Jackson said nothing was being withheld from the tests, and he said that Trump’s release was more than any president before him had done. Jackson recommended that Trump try to lose 10 to 15 pounds.

But somephysicians and analysts at the time said the report also showed Trump had an increased risk of heart problems — underscoring why releasing detailed results can provide important information beyond a general statement. CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, noted that a CT scan showed that Trump’s coronary calcium score was 133, up from 98 in 2013 and 34 in 2009. Gupta wrote that a score over 100 “indicates plaque is present and that the patient has heart disease,” and also noted Trump had increased cholesterol levels. Jackson said in releasing the report that he had increased Trump’s cholesterol-lowering medication, in addition to his recommendations about diet. (No numbers about cholesterol or calcium were released in the latest report.)

Jackson, who is now a GOP congressmanrepresenting Texas, has been an outspoken supporter of Trump and critic of Biden’s health. The Navy in 2022 demoted him from retired rear admiral to retired captain after a Pentagon’s inspector general’s report that substantiated allegations about his inappropriate behavior as White House physician, The Post recently reported.

And when Trump caught COVID because he refused to cancel appearances or wear a mask:

[Jackson’s successor Dr. Sean] Conley supported Trump’s usage of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, during the coronavirus pandemic. Conley wrote a May 18, 2020, memo in which he said he had discussed the evidence for and against the use of hydroxychloroquine and “concluded the potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risks.”

Then, after Trump contracted covid-19 in the fall of 2020, Conley made statements that played down the severity of Trump’s illness that were later contradicted by other White House officials and subsequent reporting. While Conley wrote in a memo that Trump was recovering and had “no symptoms,” then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told reporters that Trump was doing worse than Conley had let on. Conley later said that “it came off that we were trying to hide something, which wasn’t necessarily true. … The fact of the matter is that he’s doing really well.”

This latest exam by the concierge doctor was held in September, 2023.

I think Trump is probably physically fine. He seems to have a robust constitution. But he is not mentally well and it’s obvious. I doubt that the concierge doctor is very qualified to make an accurate assessment of that. But it’s really not necessary. There’s something wrong with him. He’s always rambled and said stupid things. But now he’s exhibiting some behavior that is just plain weird. Doctors who have seen it think it may have been a TIA.

Trump short circuits again LOL pic.twitter.com/OqfJpZR2i8

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 2, 2024

Listen to this insane blather and then think about the nuclear codes ☢️ https://t.co/MnmW5RMLQw

— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) April 6, 2024

I think Trump’s incoherence has a lot more salience now that the right has been slagging Biden for his alleged dementia. They opened the door to a closer look at how daft he really is and how much worse it’s gotten.

As long as people see it. Rachel Leingang writes about this in the Guardian today:

Watching a Trump speech in full better shows what it’s like inside his head: a smorgasbord of falsehoods, personal and professional vendettas, frequent comparisons to other famous people, a couple of handfuls of simple policy ideas, and a lot of non sequiturs that veer into barely intelligible stories.

Curiously, Trump tucks the most tangible policy implications in at the end. His speeches often finish with a rundown of what his second term in office could bring, in a meditation-like recitation the New York Times recently compared to a sermon. Since these policies could become reality, here’s a few of those ideas:

-Instituting the death penalty for drug dealers.

-Creating the “Trump Reciprocal Trade Act”: “If China or any other country makes us pay 100% or 200% tariff, which they do, we will make them pay a reciprocal tariff of 100% or 200%. In other words, you screw us and we’ll screw you.”

-Indemnifying all police officers and law enforcement officials.

-Rebuilding cities and taking over Washington DC, where, he said in a recent speech, there are “beautiful columns” put together “through force of will” because there were no “Caterpillar tractors” and now those columns have graffiti on them.

-Issuing an executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content.

-Moving to one-day voting with paper ballots and voter ID.

This conclusion is the most straightforward part of a Trump speech and is typically the extent of what a candidate for office would say on the campaign trail, perhaps with some personal storytelling or mild joking added in.

But it’s also often the shortest part.

Trump’s tangents aren’t new, nor is Trump’s penchant for elevating baseless ideas that most other presidential candidates wouldn’t, like his promotion of injecting bleach during the pandemic.

But in a presidential race among two old men that’s often focused on the age of the one who’s slightly older, these campaign trail antics shed light on Trump’s mental acuity, even if people tend to characterize them differently than Joe Biden’s. While Biden’s gaffes elicit serious scrutiny, as writers in the New Yorker and the New York Times recently noted, we’ve seemingly become inured to Trump’s brand of speaking, either skimming over it or giving him leeway because this has always been his shtick.

Trump, like Biden, has confused names of world leaders (but then claims it’s on purpose). He has also stumbled and slurred his words. But beyond that, Trump’s can take a different turn. Trump has described using an “iron dome” missile defense system as “ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. They’ve only got 17 seconds to figure this whole thing out. Boom. OK. Missile launch. Whoosh. Boom.”

These tangents can be part of a tirade, or they can be what one can only describe as complete nonsense.

During this week’s Wisconsin speech, which was more coherent than usual, Trump pulled out a few frequent refrains: comparing himself, incorrectly, to Al Capone, saying he was indicted more than the notorious gangster; making fun of the Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis’s first name (“It’s spelled fanny like your ass, right? Fanny. But when she became DA, she decided to add a little French, a little fancy”).

He made fun of Biden’s golfing game, miming how Biden golfs, perhaps a ding back at Biden for poking Trump about his golf game. Later, he called Biden a “lost soul” and lamented that he gets to sit at the president’s desk. “Can you imagine him sitting at the Resolute Desk? What a great desk,” Trump said.

One muddled addition in Wisconsin involved squatters’ rights, a hot topic related to immigration now: “If you have illegal aliens invading your home, we will deport you,” presumably meaning the migrant would be deported instead of the homeowner. He wanted to create a federal taskforce to end squatting, he said.

“Sounds like a little bit of a weird topic but it’s not, it’s a very bad thing,” he said.

These half-cocked remarks aren’t new; they are a feature of who Trump is and how he communicates that to the public, and that’s key to understanding how he is as a leader.

The New York Times opinion writer Jamelle Bouie described it as “something akin to the soft bigotry of low expectations”, whereby no one expected him to behave in an orderly fashion or communicate well.

Some of these bizarre asides are best seen in full, like this one about Biden at the beach in Trump’s Georgia response to the State of the Union:

“Somebody said he looks great in a bathing suit, right? And you know, when he was in the sand and he was having a hard time lifting his feet through the sand, because you know sand is heavy, they figured three solid ounces per foot, but sand is a little heavy, and he’s sitting in a bathing suit. Look, at 81, do you remember Cary Grant? How good was Cary Grant, right? I don’t think Cary Grant, he was good. I don’t know what happened to movie stars today. We used to have Cary Grant and Clark Gable and all these people. Today we have, I won’t say names, because I don’t need enemies. I don’t need enemies. I got enough enemies. But Cary Grant was, like – Michael Jackson once told me, ‘The most handsome man, Trump, in the world.’ ‘Who?’ ‘Cary Grant.’ Well, we don’t have that any more, but Cary Grant at 81 or 82, going on 100. This guy, he’s 81, going on 100. Cary Grant wouldn’t look too good in a bathing suit, either. And he was pretty good-looking, right?”

Or another Hollywood-related bop, inspired by a rant about Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade’s romantic relationship:

“It’s a magnificent love story, like Gone With the Wind. You know Gone With the Wind, you’re not allowed to watch it any more. You know that, right? It’s politically incorrect to watch Gone With the Wind. They have a list. What were the greatest movies ever made? Well, Gone With the Wind is usually number one or two or three. And then they have another list you’re not allowed to watch any more, Gone With the Wind. You tell me, is our country screwed up?”

He still claims to have “done more for Black people than any president other than Abraham Lincoln” and also now says he’s being persecuted more than Lincoln and Andrew Jackson:

All my life you’ve heard of Andrew Jackson, he was actually a great general and a very good president. They say that he was persecuted as president more than anybody else, second was Abraham Lincoln. This is just what they said. This is in the history books. They were brutal, Andrew Jackson’s wife actually died over it.”

I just have to interject that the only thing he’d heard about Jackson — until Steve Bannon told him that he was just like him — was that he was on the 20 dollar bill. He is, as you know, very, very ignorant. His intelligence is a purely feral and survival instinct. I think many people have forgotten that which is why it’s important to remind them of his inane ramblings during the biggest crisis of his presidency — the pandemic.

Leingang continues:

You not only see the truly bizarre nature of his speeches when viewing them in full, but you see the sheer breadth of his menace and animus toward those who disagree with him.

His comments especially toward migrants have grown more dehumanizing. He has said they are “poisoning the blood” of the US – a nod at Great Replacement Theory, the far-right conspiracy that the left is orchestrating migration to replace white people. Trump claimed the people coming in were “prisoners, murderers, drug dealers, mental patients and terrorists, the worst they have”. He has repeatedly called migrants “animals”.

[…]

And he has turned more authoritarian in his language, saying he would be a “dictator on day one” but then later said it would only be for a day. He’s called his political enemies “vermin”: “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” he said in New Hampshire in late 2023.

At a speech in March in Ohio about the US auto industry he claimed there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost, which some interpreted as him claiming there would be violence if he loses the election.

Trump’s campaign said later that he meant the comment to be specific to the auto industry, but now the former president has started saying Biden created a “border bloodbath” and the Republican National Committee created a website to that effect as well.

It’s tempting to find a coherent line of attack in Trump speeches to try to distill the meaning of a rambling story. And it’s sometimes hard to even figure out the full context of what he’s saying, either in text or subtext and perhaps by design, like the “bloodbath” comment or him saying there wouldn’t be another election if he doesn’t win this one.

But it’s only in seeing the full breadth of the 2024 Trump speech that one can truly understand what kind of president he could become if he won the election.

“It’s easiest to understand the threat that Trump poses to American democracy most clearly when you see it for yourself,” Susan B Glasser wrote in the New Yorker. “Small clips of his craziness can be too easily dismissed as the background noise of our times.”

But if you ask Trump himself, these are just examples that Trump is smart, he says.

“The fake news will say, ‘Oh, he goes from subject to subject.’ No, you have to be very smart to do that. You got to be very smart. You know what it is? It’s called spot-checking. You’re thinking about something when you’re talking about something else, and then you get back to the original. And they go, ‘Holy shit. Did you see what he did?’ It’s called intelligence.”

It’s called dementia.

I hope that everyone takes the time to watch at least one of his rally speeches in full as she advises. I know it’s a painful chore but everyone needs to see one whole speech in order to fully understand how bad it’s gotten. Between the incoherence, the promises of vengeance, the crudeness and the scripted fascism it’s much worse than it was before.

Netanyahu and bad faith all around

It’s a struggle to manage the frustration this week. Yes, the economy (in the aggregate anyway) continues to go gangbusters. Simon Rosenberg continues to push Hopium like a street hustler. Don’t worry. Be hopey. And yet.

Beneath it all is the nagging sense that the world is teetering. Gaza is a mess. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu looks more and more like a murderous autocrat with familiar echoes of our bumbling homegrown one. Like Donald Trump, he needs to stay in power to stay out of jail. So far, three years after instigating a violent insurrection, that’s one thing at which Trump seems infuriatinglly adept.

Michael Tomasky laments that it’s taken President Biden this long to at least threaten Netanyahu with harsh language:

It’s sad that it takes the tragic killing of seven workers for the great global humanitarian José Andrés, as opposed to the piles upon piles of dead Palestinian babies, to spur this change. And, of course, it’s not even really a change yet. It’s a threat of a change down the road if certain behaviors continue. As has been widely noted, on the same day the World Central Kitchen workers were killed by the Israel Defense Forces, the Biden administration approved sending more than 2,000 additional bombs to Israel. But this new tone from the White House is already yielding some results: Israel took immediate steps to increase the flow of aid to Gaza.

The invasion of Gaza is first and foremost a moral calamity. Alongside the wanton death, there is the imminence of massive famine (well, it was declared “imminent” in a March 18 report; it may be happening right now). A recent U.N. report calculated that the destruction of Gaza has been so severe that it will be—get this—2092 before Gaza is returned to its 2022 GDP levels.

But it is also a potential political calamity for Joe Biden. If this war is still happening in October, he will lose the election. Democrats right now very strongly back a cease-fire. In a March 27 poll, both Democrats and independents disapproved of Israel’s actions; just 18 percent of Democrats and 29 percent of independents approve of how Israel is prosecuting the war.

On top of that, Trump’s judge-in-the-box, Aileen Cannon, is fooling no one with the thumb she’s applying to the scales of justice to benefit her liege lord. Greg Sargent writes of the “shady gamesmanship lurking behind” her ruling on Trump’s Presidential Records Act, a win for special prosecutor Jack Smith. Or is it?

But as constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe put it, this was a “pretend” ruling against Trump that ended up “reserving” Cannon’s ability to decide the case for Trump in a way that cannot be appealed. In short, Cannon seems to recognize that as she moves toward that endgame, it’s essential to maintain plausible deniability throughout.

“Judge Cannon is being canny in her Trump-protective approach,” Lee Kovarsky, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told me.

Trump doesn’t seem to have noticed the “canny” part. He doesn’t bother hiding his expectation that Cannon—who was appointed to the federal bench by Trump in 2020—will put a heavy thumb on the scale in his favor. That complicates Cannon’s efforts to maintain that objective legal aura she’s striving for.

Which points to a larger pattern: On numerous fronts, Trump’s allies—overt and tacit alike—seek to run interference for his corruption and likely criminality in ways that allow them to maintain a veneer of respect for the rule of law. But Trump keeps demanding that they openly pervert the rule of law on his behalf, not least because a central feature of the MAGA movement is explicit contempt for the very idea that the law should apply to him and his supporters at all.

Any Republican pretensions to Americanness are at this point as credible as Trump University.

Excuse me while I go rend my garments.

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But of course they did

President Joe Biden on Friday visited the fallen Key Bridge site in Baltimore and pledged to citizens that “your nation has your back.”

Politico:

“My administration is committed, absolutely committed, to ensuring that parties responsible for this tragedy pay to repair the damage and be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law will allow, but I also want to be clear: We will support Maryland and Baltimore every step of the way to help you rebuild and maintain all the business and commerce that’s here now,” he said at the foot of the downed bridge, with the wind whipping behind him.

Well, not the entire nation. While Office of Management and Budget director Shalanda Young has requested Congress to authorize “a 100 percent Federal cost share for rebuilding the bridge,” unconditional support is out of fashion for the party dominated by a former president whose every decision is transactional (also Politico):

The House Freedom Caucus signaled Friday that they’re open to giving federal funds to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, but they have a few significant conditions.

The conservative hardliners’ caveats include: They want the Biden administration to reverse course on its pause on new export terminal permits for liquefied natural gas (LNG) and for any spending to be fully offset by cuts elsewhere. Notably, Speaker Mike Johnson had recently floated a proposal to link long-stalled Ukraine aid with easing that same energy policy.

So not so fast:

And it’s not just Freedom Caucus Republicans who’ve cautioned against a hasty federal response to the Baltimore tragedy. Many GOP lawmakers have urged that officials exhaust existing federal pots of money before considering new spending.

“If it proves necessary to appropriate taxpayer money to get one of America’s busiest ports back online, Congress should ensure it is fully offset and that burdensome regulations … are waived,” the Freedom Caucus position reads, pointing to various environmental and labor rules.

Biden wants union laborers to rebuild the bridge with “union labor and American steel.” The Freedom Caucus’ conditions include waiving environmental and union wage regulations “to avoid all unnecessary delays and costs.”

At least they didn’t throw in renaming Dulles Airport after Donald Trump as a condition. Democrats responded to that with a snarky proposal to rename a federal prison in Miami after Trump (Axios):

Driving the news: The two-page measure would redesignate the Miami Federal Correctional Institution in Florida as the “Donald J. Trump Federal Correctional Institution.”

• It is being introduced by Reps. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who represents a district that Dulles Airport falls within; Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), who represents part of Greater Miami; and John Garamendi (D-Calif.).

Between the lines: The bill is a pithy way of drawing attention to the 91 state and federal criminal charges Trump is facing across four cases.

It’s a wonder anything gets done in this congress. Which if you are the Freedom Caucus is the goal.

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Pygmy Slow Loris babies! Via Zooborns

For the first time, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) is celebrating the birth of two pygmy slow lorises, an endangered species. Small Mammal House keepers reported for duty the morning of March 21 and observed that 3-year-old mother Naga had given birth overnight and was caring for two infants. She and the babies’ 2-year-old father, Pabu, received a recommendation to breed from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Species Survival Plan (SSP). These babies are the first offspring for both parents. Keepers have observed Naga carrying, grooming and nursing the babies, which appear to be healthy and strong. Animal care staff will determine the babies’ sexes at their first vet exam, which will take place in a few months.

The family is on view at the Small Mammal House, and keepers say the babies are most active in the late morning and early afternoon.Naga and Pabu arrived at NZCBI in August 2022 from the Brookfield Zoo in Illinois and Little Rock Zoo in Arkansas, respectively. SSP scientists determine which animals to breed by considering their genetic makeup, health and temperament, among other factors.

According to keepers, Naga’s personality is calm and sweet, though she tends to spook easily. She takes her time when exploring her exhibit and rests often. Pabu, on the other hand, seems to be more high energy. He is inquisitive and always the first to approach keepers and participate in training sessions and feedings. Although pygmy slow lorises reach sexual maturity around 9 months of age for females and 1.5 years of age for males, often they do not successfully reproduce until 2 to 3 years of age. Naga and Pabu’s “howdy” introductions took place in September 2023—about a year after they arrived—and the pair bred soon after meeting. This species’ gestation is about six months.    

He might be. His fundraising is anemic and he’s acting panicked

Cruz: Colin Allred is outraising my last opponent 3-1. They are flooding millions of dollars into Texas and the reason is simple. My last reelection was a 3-point race. I won by 2.6% pic.twitter.com/9RB0Hof7Wb

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 4, 2024

It’s hard to imagine that he’s not going to be re-elected in Texas but he is the most unlikable official in politics (and that’s saying something) so maybe even the Texans are sick of him:

THE WALLS ARE closing in around Ted Cruz, and the Republican senator is lashing out. 

Cruz, who has served two terms as Texas junior senator, is facing a tough reelection challenge from former NFL player and current U.S. Rep. ​​Colin Allred (D-Texas), who won Texas’ Democratic Senate primary in a landslide victory last month. 

On Wednesday, Cruz begged for donation on Fox News while complaining that Allred is out fundraising his 2018 challenger, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, by leaps and bounds. 

“The Democrats are coming after me, they are gonna spend more than $100 million this year, George Soros is already spending millions of dollars in the state of Texas,” Cruz told Sean Hannity. “My opponent a liberal Democrat named Colin Allred, is out raising Beto O’Rourke, my last opponent, 3 to 1. They are flooding millions of dollars into Texas — and the reason is simple. You remember my last reelection, it was a 3-point race. I won by 2.6 percent.” 

Cruz’s fundraising concerns may explain a very shady financial arrangement the senator has with iHeartMedia, the hosting platform of his podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz. Last week, The Houston Chronicle reported that the radio network paid out $630,850 to a Cruz-affiliated super Pac, Truth and Courage. According to FEC data reviewed by the Chronicle, the six-figure sum represents about a third of the PAC’s fundraising haul since 2023. The LoseCruz PAC, a political action committee challenging the senator’s reelection, first reported a $214,752.98 transfer from iHeartMedia to Truth and Courage in March.  

A Cruz campaign spokesperson told the Chronicle that the senator “appears on ‘Verdict’ three times a week for free.” A representative from the company said the funds were the proceeds of sales for the podcast’s advertising inventory, and that Cruz “volunteers his time to host this podcast and isn’t compensated for it.” But if iHeartMedia is sending massive checks to a PAC affiliated with his reelection campaign, is there really no benefit to Cruz? 

Of course there is. He needs money badly because he’s not raising enough.

I still don’t think he’s going to lose. Texas is totally radicalized. But you never know. Sometimes there’s an individual so odious that even people who agree with them can’t stand to look at them anymore.

It must be bad news for Joe Biden

Steve Benen at MSNBC reports:

Expectations heading into this morning showed projections of about 200,000 new jobs having been added in the United States in March. As it turns out, according to the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the job market managed to do much better than that. CNBC reported:

The U.S. economy added more jobs than expected in March in a sign of continued acceleration for what has been a bustling and resilient labor market. Nonfarm payrolls increased 303,000 for the month, well above expectations for an increase of 200,000. … The unemployment rate held steady at 3.8%, as expected.

In addition to the top-line data, we also learned that wage growth continued to outpace inflation. As unemployment rate inched lower again, the jobless rate has now been below 4% for 26 consecutive months — a streak unseen in the United States since the 1960s.

As for the politics, let’s circle back to previous coverage to put the data in perspective. Over the course of the first three years of Donald Trump’s presidency — when the Republican said the United States’ economy was the greatest in the history of the planet — the economy created roughly 6.35 million jobs, spanning all of 2017, 2018 and 2019.

According to the latest tally, the U.S. economy has created over 15.9 million jobs since January 2021 — more than double the combined total of Trump’s first three years.

In recent months, Republicans have responded to developments like these by pretending not to notice them. No one should be surprised if GOP officials keep the trend going today.

For some additional context, consider job growth by year over the past decade, updated to reflect the latest data revisions:

2013: 2.3 million

2014: 3 million

2015: 2.7 million

2016: 2.3 million

2017: 2.1 million

2018: 2.3 million

2019: 2 million

2020: -9.3 million

2021: 7.3 million

2022: 4.8 million

2023: 3 million

Three months into 2024: 829,000

On twitter all the wingnuts are shrieking that the jobs numbers are rigged and that it’s all recovery from the pandemic. As you can see by the numbers above, that’s just not true.

And that’s what they love about him.

Trump in leaked footage at wealthy fundraiser: You’re all wealthy people. You have so much money… We gave you the largest tax cuts in history pic.twitter.com/vDFuQM7nUx

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 5, 2024

He’s selling out the country for personal gain … again

Brian Beutler points out in his fantastic newsletter today (subscribe here) that Trump’s extracurricular foreign policy activity is almost certainly in service of his election in November and suggests that the Democrats take this seriously:

President Biden may have reached his wits end, however belatedly, with Benjamin Netanyahu. A readout of their most recent conversation suggests that, in the wake of the World Central Kitchen killings, and the subsequent flight-to-safety of humanitarian workers, U.S. aid will be conditioned going forward on a rapidly implemented ceasefire (of uncertain length) in order to meliorate the catastrophe on the ground.

But Biden’s larger picture goal—and perhaps the only way to lastingly tie this Israeli government’s hands—is a grand settlement, along the lines he’s been negotiating, that would sweeten the deal for Israel by normalizing its relations with Saudi Arabia. 

He should thus be alarmed at the news (if it is indeed news to him) that Trump has held at least one undisclosed phone call with Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, in recent days. 

Trump has been strangely at pains of late to imply that he is at odds with the rest of his party, which lusts for bloody retribution against Palestinians. He recently told a duo of right-wing Israeli journalists, “You have to finish up your war,” and stressed the same thing to the Republican apparatchik Hugh Hewitt, insisting in his television-addled way that Israel is “absolutely losing the PR war.”

On its face, that suggests agreement with Biden. If we could ever take Trump at face value or trust his motives, his private contacts with MBS might not be so worrisome. There is speculation and reporting to suggest that Trump views Netanyahu as disloyal for having congratulated President Biden on winning the 2020 election—perhaps this is his retribution? And he may see some advantage in getting caught advocating for Israel to end its war, so that he might claim credit if a ceasefire materializes in the coming weeks.

But the clear optimum for him—what is in his best interest, the only interest he cares about—is to scuttle Biden’s efforts to reach a grand diplomatic settlement in the region. And between his secret conversations, his private business arrangements with Saudi royals, and his control over Republicans in Congress, he almost certainly has the clout required to subvert U.S. foreign policy in this way. Just as he’s subverted Biden’s Ukraine policy and border-security negotiations for personal gain.  

He’s also not necessarily working alone. We learned this week that Netanyahu hosted Jared Kushner for dinner in December, and that Trump treats his degenerate former national-security henchman Richard Grenell as an “envoy” to right-wing leaders abroad. 

What’s more likely: that Trump is Biden’s earnest partner seeking an end to the war in Gaza? Or that he would like to create that impression domestically, while working behind the scenes to prolong it? Biden shouldn’t just wonder if Trump and his lackeys are collectively up to no good. He should suspect it. And insofar as he has access to information that confirms his suspicion, he should reveal it to the American public.

This is not unprecedented. Trump’s spirit animal, Richard Nixon, did this in 1968:

On Oct. 31, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam in hopes of encouraging peace talks to end the Vietnam War. At the time, Johnson knew a secret. Some in the Nixon campaign were secretly communicating with the South Vietnamese Government in an effort to delay the opening of the peace talks. They offered the prospect of a better deal for South Vietnam if Nixon became president.

One of the most visible intermediaries between the Nixon campaign and the South Vietnamese was Anna Chennault. Chennault was a Chinese-born Republican fundraiser and widow of U.S. Major General Claire Chennault, who led the World War II Flying Tigers.

When he learned of the back-channel communications, President Johnson called the effort “treason.” However, he never made the information public, fearing damaging the presidency as well as having to admit that he used government agencies to spy on Chennault and the South Vietnamese. In addition, Nixon denied involvement in the efforts.

The White House file on the matter was maintained by National Security Advisor Walt Rostow, and he kept it after leaving the White House. In 1973, after Johnson’s death, Rostow gave the sealed package to the director of the LBJ Presidential Library. Under the plain outer wrapping, a letter-size envelope was taped to the large inner envelope. Written on the small envelope was “the ‘X’ envelope,” so it became known as the X-File or X-envelope.

At the time the file was kept secret, to be opened 50 years later. However, the LBJ Library opened it in 1994 and released some related telephone conversations in 2008. Some of the documents remain classified.

There’s plenty of evidence that Reagan did the same thing with the Iran hostages in 1980. This is something that Republicans have been doing for half a century and Donald Trump is far likelier to do it than they were — he needs a lot of money on top of election help. (Also he’s a corrupt criminal.)

Biden should listen to party wisemen like Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin, and liberal gadflies like me, and let the public know what the government knows about Trump’s betrayals in real time. As Raskin told the New Republic’s Greg Sargent this week, “It would be good to know if we could fill in the blanks in terms of the very specific commitments that he’s making right now. And he has emissaries who are traveling all over the world making common cause with right-wing governments. And those people are doing everything they can to try to make Donald Trump look good.”

I hope they do it but I’m not confident they will. But if there’s ever been a necessity to stop this behavior it’s now. The man is currently under indictment for stealing classified documents, including nuclear secrets, and he’s desperate. This can’t be swept under the rug.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has twisted himself into a pretzel trying to please his fractious caucus and he’s starting to show the strain. Unfortunately, the people of Ukraine are currently paying the price as he struggles with what appears to be a cage match with Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene who is making it clear that she intends to blow up the House of Representatives in an election year if she doesn’t get her way.

The state of play remains what it’s been for weeks now. The Senate passed a tortuously negotiated bipartisan bill that included funding for Ukraine and the border months ago which the House rejected upon orders from Donald Trump who openly admitted that his motives were purely to benefit his campaign.

Trump says he sabotaged the bipartisan deal to secure the border because “it made it much better for the opposing side” pic.twitter.com/yAysQiWrkX

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 2, 2024

Since then Johnson has been running around in circles insisting one day that he won’t bring any Ukraine funding bill to the floor and the next suggesting that he has an agreement on Ukraine that would include a provision that would seize frozen Russian assets and categorize the Ukrainian aid as a loan, an idea floated by Donald Trump and S. Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. As of Thursday, he was back insisting that there must be more border security or it’s a no-go. Nobody seems to be sure what, if anything, is going to come to the floor.

Greene, meanwhile, is having a monumental temper tantrum ostensibly because Johnson managed to avoid shutting down the government by making a deal with Democrats to keep it funded through next fall. The idea that he would agree to further fund the Ukraine assistance has infuriated her to the point that she’s filed a motion to vacate the chair and seems ready to call for the vote with the GOP’s now minuscule majority and turn the body into chaos once again.

In an interview with Manu Raju of CNN on Wednesday, Greene let fly, claiming that Republican voters are “furious that our so-called Christian conservative, Republican Speaker of the House did this to the went on to compare Johnson to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell saying “people are fed up with Republicans that say one thing and turn around and literally join the flock and just continue the same old crap everybody’s tired of…and here, Mike Johnson, he’s literally turned into Mitch McConnell’s twin and worse. He’s a Democrat. There’s not even any daylight between him and Nancy Pelosi at this point.” I’m not sure she could have insulted him any worse.

There are quite a few members of the MAGA caucus who are extremely hostile to Ukraine aid but Greene seems to be making it a red line issue for her even though Trump himself has tried to ease away from his hard line position by offering up the loan idea. She told Raju that idea is “the biggest bunch of heaping, steaming pile of bullsh*t. … That is so insulting to the American people.” She’s not wrong. It’s a meaningless, irrelevant policy that only someone as inept and out of his depth as Trump would have the nerve to propose. Graham knows this too but he actually wants to get aid to Ukraine, as does Johnson, and they see it as a way to appease Trump by giving him the ability to tell his followers that he’s the very stable genius running foreign policy. Apparently, many Democrats are willing to let him have that if it means getting this over with.

Greene is so worked up that she went to the one place where she knew she’d find a fellow Ukraine hater and Vladimir Putin aficionado: Tucker Carlson’s Twitter/X podcast. (How the mighty have fallen.) She went even further in her condemnation of Johnson:

NEW: Marjorie Taylor Greene Speculates Speaker Johnson Is "Being Blackmailed" — "What Do They Have On Him?"

GREENE: But now Mike Johnson has made a complete departure of who he is and what he stands for, and to the point where people are literally asking, is he blackmailed? What… pic.twitter.com/trjGjYUqpZ

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) April 3, 2024

GREENE: But now Mike Johnson has made a complete departure of who he is and what he stands for, and to the point where people are literally asking, is he blackmailed? What is wrong with him because he’s completely disconnected with what we want?

CARLSON: Do you think he is being blackmailed?

GREENE: I have no idea. I can’t comprehend, Tucker, what radically changes a man…

Carlson added that he thinks Johnson and McConnell may be being blackmailed over issues in their personal lives.

It’s hard to imagine how she’s going to deal with Johnson in their scheduled meeting today after all that but it’s pretty clear that she’s very close to calling for his ouster under the assumption that it’s what Republican voters are begging for.

She doesn’t have a lot of support in the caucus, however. CNN’s Jake Tapper noted the other day that Rep. Don Bacon, R-NE., said of Johnson’s predicament, “he’s got a gun to his head right now, but we need to have a Churchill, not a Chamberlain right now. He could be on the right side of history.” Tapper tartly commented, “I’m not sure that Marjorie Taylor Greene knows who Churchill or Chamberlain are” which is almost certainly the case.

Johnson’s problems with Greene are complicated by the fact that he’s going to have to rely on Democrats to not only vote for the Ukraine bill but possibly to save his speakership should she decide to go for it. According to Axios, some Democrats are pushing their advantage by demanding humanitarian aide not just for Ukraine and Gaza but also Sudan, Haiti, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Venezuela and Lebanon. Many of them also don’t like the idea of seizing frozen Russian assets and are opposed to a GOP demand to lift an administration pause on liquified natural gas exports. It’s clear that cobbling together a bipartisan bill in the House won’t be easy even without Marjorie Taylor Greene’s hissy fit.

If she decides to go ahead and call for Johnson to vacate the chair, the big question is whether a few Democrats will cross the line and save his bacon. Newly elected centrist Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-NY, says he won’t vote for removal and there may very well be a few others in swing districts who believe this will endear them to their constituents. That’s just how “moderate” Democrats roll.

But that will probably be the end of Johnson’s short reign anyway. From that point on his power as speaker will be gone — the only thing that could shame a Republican in the MAGA era is to be seen as having been saved by Democrats. He will be speaker in name only. It remains to be seen if Greene will lose power or gain it as a result of her actions and I’d say it’s 50-50 either way. Stay tuned.

Salon